A Few Words About A few words about...™ Oklahoma! -- in Blu-ray (2 Viewers)

[Ed Lachmann]

Sorry, we watched THE KING AND I last night and it was indeed very "watchable" and so much better than the dreadful DVD. Dear God, they have the elements that they have and do the best they can with them. THIS is one reason why fewer classic films make it to blu-ray. I've stopped complaining about any of these releases and now save ALL my vitriol for SPARTACUS which is a real debacle. There's certainly not enough money or desire to make all classic films flawlessly pristine for a BD release. And I, for one, want to see a few more of my beloved films in BD before the big dirt sleep, however they get there.

 

[AnthonyClarke]

Q for Will Krupp and Bigshot ..
If I want to try the effect of using 1081i native instead of 1080p, do I change setting in my Oppo or in my Epson projector?
I'm presuming this should be a player change, not projector .. but thought I'd check before I start messing about and causing problems for myself ....

 

[bigshot]

The Todd/AO version of Oklahoma is already 1080i. You don't need to do anything to get 1080 60i.

I'm guessing you mean the additional frame interpolation instead of just 60i the way it is on the disk. Your monitor or projector should have a setting for interpolation.

More info here...

http://www.projectorcentral.com/frame_interpolation.htm

I have an Epson 7500UB projector and it's under Signal > Frame Interpolation. Low worked best for me. Make sure to watch the dream ballet this way!

 

[AnthonyClarke]

Thanks for the advice ... I'll give it a try on the weekend.Cheers

 

[Will Krupp]

I don't use any frame interpolation (I don't personally believe in it) but the "original resolution" setting is on the Sony player, Anthony, so it would be a setting to look for on the Oppo.

 

[bigshot]

I did some research yesterday into pulldowns. I can apply pulldown at the player or in my projector. I found that a 2:3 pulldown applied by my Sony blu-ray player was much better than a 4:4 pulldown applied by the Epson projector. Very non intuitive!

 

[JoshZ]

But that's just it, I'm not really just switching between 1080i and 1080p. I'm switching between "original resolution" which, in this case just happens to be 1080i, and the blanket "1080p" setting. I discovered some time ago that using 1080p as an output bizarrely seems to add an unnecessary layer of processing to the image, which is why I only ever use it for DVD viewing. "Original" delivers a clean, seemingly unmolested image from player to display.

If that's the case, then your Blu-ray player is doing something wrong - and this must be a problem specific to that make or model. Switching the output resolution between "original" (aka "native") and fixed "1080p" should not affect color or contrast unless some other setting is engaged at one resolution but not the other.

I still suggest that a blind viewing comparison may prove very instructive.

 

[Will Krupp]

I still suggest that a blind viewing comparison may prove very instructive.

I know I know...so that I will be shown to be a victim of the placebo effect because I can't possibly be trusted to know what I'm seeing blah blah blah.

How about you just let it go, already?

The original question has been answered, thanks.

 

[OliverK]

I don't use any frame interpolation (I don't personally believe in it) but the "original resolution" setting is on the Sony player, Anthony, so it would be a setting to look for on the Oppo.

It is called source direct on the OPPO and the different resolution settings can be switched on the fly while the movie is playing.
Source direct will defeat all other picture settings and just output what is on the disc.

 

[MarkW2]

The price of the box set on Amazon has gone down yet again. It is now $110.99. I'm waiting for one more drop because I already own South Pacific and Sound of Music.

 

[ahollis]

The price of the box set on Amazon has gone down yet again. It is now $110.99. I'm waiting for one more drop because I already own South Pacific and Sound of Music.

Wait for two more drops, around $80 would be correct.

 

[AnthonyClarke]

Or the price I bought it for; around $73 -- and worth every dollar.

 

[Mark Booth]

Todd-AO 'Oklahoma!' alone is practically worth $73.

And the songs are STILL stuck in my head! It probably doesn't help that I purchased the soundtrack on iTunes.

Mark

 

[JoshZ]

I know I know...so that I will be shown to be a victim of the placebo effect because I can't possibly be trusted to know what I'm seeing blah blah blah.

How about you just let it go, already?

The original question has been answered, thanks.

I'm honestly not trying to insult you. If you could stop acting so defensive for a moment, you might see that I'm trying to help you get to the bottom of the problem you're describing. The differences you claim to see cannot be attributed to merely changing the output resolution of the Blu-ray player. By design, that setting should not affect color or contrast unless your player is doing something very strange and unusual.

Occam's Razor - the simplest solution is usually the right one. Maybe something is wrong with your Blu-ray player, but before you can determine that, the first thing you should do is rule out Placebo Effect, which you have not attempted to do beyond insisting, "No, that can't be it because I am too smart to ever be fooled."

Placebo Effect is a real thing. I'm not trying to shame you by suggesting that it may play a part in this. If you want to know what's going on with your equipment, do your due diligence and first verify that you can actually consistently tell the difference between one setting and the other without knowing which is being used. If you can't, well, there's your answer.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

I've come across some behavior in my setup that might be causing what Will is seeing.

I use a single calibrated input on my Epson projector. It's set for "auto" so will display natively whatever format comes in. All my sources (cable, WDTV, Roku, HD-DVD, Blu-ray) run through my Denon receiver, which is set to bypass mode for all of them. All sources are set to output their highest resolution (1080p for everything but cable, which is 1080i, with one other exception as noted below).

Recently, I was testing the DVD scaling differences between my HD-DVD player and my Blu-ray player when I noticed that the image looked very different using the same disc in both machines. Noticeably darker, different saturation & hue, etc., on the HD-DVD. After verifying that both players were set to their normal or non-processing modes, I checked the info display on the projector to see if it showed the signal was different. It was only then that I remembered that the HD-DVD player was outputting 1080i (it's the Toshiba that didn't do 1080p upscaling). My Epson projector, even though the same HDMI input and color memory setting was being used, automatically switched to a different set of color controls (I must have adjusted them once using 1080i cable as the source) when the 1080i signal was detected. Yet, the color "memory" on the Epson was still on the regular memory setting. To make sure that this was, in fact, happening, I readjusted the calibration settings with the 1080i source playing to match the numbers when the 1080p is playing. After that, both players delivered virtually the same picture quality.

Will, is it possible your display is doing something similar? Other than calling up my display settings menu I would not have known this behavior happened on my projector.

 

[Will Krupp]

Placebo Effect is a real thing. I'm not trying to shame you by suggesting that it may play a part in this. If you want to know what's going on with your equipment, do your due diligence and first verify that you can actually consistently tell the difference between one setting and the other without knowing which is being used. If you can't, well, there's your answer.

This is what kills me...do you not think I would not have gotten a "second opinion" before I even came on here?

If anything, it's the display, because on my LAST blu-ray player (samsung) the picture settings differed between "auto" and 1080p with "auto" being the better of the two (Samsung did not have direct or original output) and now, for whatever reason, with the Sony there is a difference between "auto" "original" and 1080p. The display is 4 years old and the thing is, I'm not unhappy with it. It's gorgeous. I'm not complaining. I'm not, nor was I ever, asking you or anyone else to "fix" my equipment. All I was ever asking was what type of depth would the movie have had in 1955. That's it, that's all, just wanted to know which one was closer to the original.

Believe me, I'm sorry I ever asked.

 

[Will Krupp]

I'm honestly not trying to insult you. If you could stop acting so defensive for a moment...

and P.S. you're not trying very hard.

 

[JoshZ]

This is what kills me...do you not think I would not have gotten a "second opinion" before I even came on here?

If anything, it's the display, because on my LAST blu-ray player (samsung) the picture settings differed between "auto" and 1080p with "auto" being the better of the two (Samsung did not have direct or original output) and now, for whatever reason, with the Sony there is a difference between "auto" "original" and 1080p. The display is 4 years old and the thing is, I'm not unhappy with it. It's gorgeous. I'm not complaining. I'm not, nor was I ever, asking you or anyone else to "fix" my equipment. All I was ever asking was what type of depth would the movie have had in 1955. That's it, that's all, just wanted to know which one was closer to the original.

Believe me, I'm sorry I ever asked.

I don't know you and you didn't mention anything about getting a second opinion, so I had no reason to assume that you'd done that. Even if you did, I don't know what you may have said to the other person ("Look at how different this is. Isn't it way better this way?") that might bias their perception to align with yours.

Again, I don't mean to be accusatory here. I'd just like to reason out why you're seeing what you claim to see, because on the face of it, it doesn't make sense.

Assuming that there really is a measurable difference in picture quality when you switch output resolution, I think Peter is probably correct that your TV defaults to different calibration settings for each resolution, even over the same HDMI input. This is easy enough to verify by setting your BD player for 1080p and checking the color, contrast, brightness, etc. values in the TV, then switching to 1080i and doing the same thing.

"All I was ever asking was what type of depth would the movie have had in 1955. That's it, that's all, just wanted to know which one was closer to the original. "

If your TV alternates between completely different picture settings with each change of resolution, the settings that were used when you calibrated the TV should be correct. The others are likely some default preset ("Vivid," "Sports," or whatever) that have no relation to accurate values.

 

[Techman707]

This is what kills me...do you not think I would not have gotten a "second opinion" before I even came on here?

All I was ever asking was what type of depth would the movie have had in 1955. That's it, that's all, just wanted to know which one was closer to the original.

Believe me, I'm sorry I ever asked.

LOL- If that was all this about, now even I'm confused.

The 30fps version of "Oklahoma" that was run ON FILM in 1955 looked spectacular....especially when compared to what else was available at the time. That said, IMHO, it's really impossible to compare film projected on a very large screen and video, projected using today's video projection technology.

Anyone that "thinks" they could make a direct comparison between the two, is just fooling themselves.

 

[JPCinema]

What wrong with the sound in the Todd-ao Blu? It's awful...and the image is so perfect..it makes even more noticeable.